Love this one from 1947, the grave of Maria Teresa who died aged 37 in Milano. With her cheery wave she looks like a volunteer in a conjurer’s levitation trick, rather than heading off as a resurrected soul.

And a final visit to Staglieno, for a wee while at least.

While his vast tomb wouldn’t look out of place on a certain street in Edinburgh, I have been able to find out nothing about Giorgio Ottone or the source of his obvious great wealth, and this is no family mausoleum, he’s the only one in there.

If you want to know more about the amazing sculpture to be seen in Italian cemeteries I can thoroughly recommend "A Legacy of Love" by Sarah Beresford. While I did a fair bit of research on my own I found this to be an invaluable guide. I can also recommend this book:

Oops yet again. That should read Sandra Beresford. What an eejit. Going through some of my Milano images again last night I discovered this detail in a photo I'd never noticed before, and felt I had to share. If I'd spotted it sooner it would have gone in the book.

Like a piece of Wedgewood porcelain, this gorgeous thing adorns the grave of Annibale Zanoni who died in 1869. Next time in I'm in Milano I'll have to see if it's signed by the sculptor. I assume it's an allegorical figure, possibly of medicine, I found on ebay a letter written in 1867 by an Annibale Zanoni who was a chemist (demanding payment from a debtor). I really hope some of you can make it over to see these places for yourselves sometime next year. I'd recommend May or September, you could even do Milano and Staglieno on the same journey (it's just a 2 hour train trip between cities).

Mantova's main graveyard is the cimitero monumentale di Borgo Angeli. There is a little bus which goes there or you can do as I did and walk along the lake's edge, cut through a posh housing estate full of barking guard dogs and walk back towards town on the Via Cremona.

While the grounds are vast they are still half empty, awaiting future use. All the interesting sculpture is clustered just inside the main gateway and almost all of the pieces of note are by just one man, Carlo Cerati, (1865 – 1948), obviously the go-to guy for quality monuments carved in bianco di Carrara, though some of his figures look a little cartoonish. The work here is obviously provincial compared with the great cemeteries of Staglieno, Milano and Torino, but there are still some tombs well worth the trip to experience. As you can see the damp air hasn't been at all kind to the stones standing out in the open.

Panzani family grave

Pedrazolli family (1928) The Silence by Carlo Cerati

Pietro Valentini (1896), A detail of the huge memorial designed by Alessandro and Silvio Monti. Currently undergoing restoration, or some emergency propping up by scaffolding.

Pepacchi Manni (1924). The Last Farewell by Carlo Cerati

Tomb by Vindizio Nodari Pesenti, 1933. For some stupid reason I didn't record the name on this grave

Detail of a tomb by Carlo Cerati, he worked this from 1921 - 1927

Righetti family (1923). Carlo Cerati

Francesca Berhamaschi (1912). Desolation. Despite it's title, Cerati's bold Symbolist style lady appears to be in the throws of orgasmic release, much in the tradition of Bernini's masterpiece the Ecstasy of St Theresa

Barbieri family (1916). Life, Faith, Love I Dreamt by Oreste Pozzi, inspired by Rodin's The Thinker

Oreste Colombo (1914). Desperation. This is Cerati's most magnificent piece, though the impressive central figure is heavily indebted to Rodin the background is an early example of Art Deco with its extraordinary stairway to heaven flanked by receding (identical) angels. Once you've spotted it in the Borgo Angeli your eye is constantly brought back to it. Like the nearby (and much less impressive) Last Farewell (see above) it also incorporates a very local feature, it is decorated with friezes of water lily seed heads which can be seen surrounding the nearby lake's edge in winter. Cerati was from Casalmaggiori and studied sculpting in Milan. As an outsider to Mantova he must have been as struck by these as I was. Oreste Colombo, the tomb's commissioner was so pleased with it he presented Cerati with a gold watch on top of his sculpting fee.

edward carolan wrote:The cemetery is featured in a bit of "Italy Unpacked" series 2 episode 1 on BBC website.

Nice to see it on telly, even though they only stuck firmly to two tiny sections. Interesting to see that too Graham Dixon's initial reaction to bourgoise realism was a bit sneery, but he was obviously struck by the sheer quality and sincerity of the work and couldn't help but praise it.

Bologna

Two weeks before Christmas and it was a warm sunny day. I headed straight for la Certosa (the Charterhouse), the oldest by far of any of the great cemeteries I have visited. Just outside the remains of Bologna's ancient town walls, it was originally a monastery founded in 1334 and parts of the surviving buildings date back to the 16th century.

The monastery was suppressed by Napoleon following his conquest of the region in 1797 and remodelled as a monumental cemetery in 1801. Famous visitors who wrote of the place included Charles Dickens and Lord Byron. In a letter to his publisher John Murray in June 1819 he mentions it's "splendid monuments" and eccentric tour guide. A later visitor affected by the place was Sigmund Freud. As a memento he kept two postcards of tombs on the walls of his famous Vienna consulting rooms, including one of the moving Minghetti memorial by Augusto Rivalta (1872), depicting the premature death of a baby mourned by children.

I dreamed vividly of the place for weeks after my own tour and not only because of it's sculpture this time but rather its buildings. Out of all the places I have been thus far in this thread la Certosa is architecturally the most stunning. If I was hosting a BBC2 documentary I would inevitably drag out the old "extraordinary" word. It is like entering a seemingly endless series of crumbling palaces and haunting courtyards all painted in vibrant colours, Piranesi like in scale. The preponderance of neo classical sculpture adorning so many of the 19h century graves adds to the dream like atmosphere and as usual, like a character in a W.G. Sebald novel, I was utterly alone for almost the entire day I wandered round this place of the dead.

Francesco Arrighi (1821), by Alessandro Franceschi

Vogli tomb (1813), by Giacomo De Maria

Levi tomb (1826), by Giovanni Putti (detail)

Napoleon's invasion of Egypt created a fashion across Europe for its ancient culture, including this 1805 true fresco memorial for Girolamo Legnani, by Giuseppe Tadolini and Petrnio Ricci. Aside from three small symbols on the lozenge above the doorway it could apparently be an entirely pagan tomb.

Edward Pepoli (1801), painted by Pelagius Palagi. Only two of Palagi's painted tombs still survive from the four he originally executed in true fresco in la Certosa.

Enea Cocchi (1867), by Carlo Monari, one of the star sculptors of la Certosa.

Angelo Minghetti's tomb is unique in the camposanto, it is the only one created from glazed ceramic, designed by Allessandro Massarenti in 1892. Minghetti was a successful industrialist who's fortune was made from sanitary products, toilets, baths, tiles, sinks etc. As such his beautiful memorial is an advert for his lavvy pans and has recently been successfully restored. In the photo of it in Sandra Berresford's book it was once in a shocking state with much of the pottery smashed.

Allegory of Work

Mazzacorati family. I thought this magnificent thing must be the work of Giulio Monteverde, but in fact it is signed "Gio Strazza", 1872 (short for Giovanni)

Valerga Giudobono family

Biagio Orpi grave

Joachim Murat, Marshal of France, one time king of Naples, a narcissistic clothes horse and genuinely brave and dashing cavalry commander. Like many such men of his day though, even a Napoleon hagiographer like Robert Asprey has to admit "he didn't have much between his ears." He proved his courage on the battleground time and again and off it, when he married Napoleon's younger sister Caroline. And yet, capped by this giant 8 feet tall statue carved by Vincenzo Vela in 1864, this is not his tomb. It is the last resting place of one of his daughters, Letizia Pepoli Murat. She is portrayed in a tiny portrait medallion on the sculpture's base. Freud could have allowed himself a chuckle looking at this, on September 2 1896, it's all about her daddy and their relationship to The Monster of Corsica.

Lodi family tomb. Sculptor's signature is illegible, but it seems to be dated 1921.

Frassetto monument (1950) by Farpi Vignoli

The remarkable dual Raggi-Ruggeri memorial to a pair of motorcycle champions (1928), by Armando Minguzzi

One of the most stunning pieces of sculpture I've seen anywhere in the world. The Bisteghi monument (1891), by Enrico Barberi. Just a shame the angel is so haughty and unsympathetic to modern taste.

Bisteghi monument, detail

The section called the Campo Ospedali is dominated by what looks like a cooling tower chimney on a power station. On closer inspection it is a memorial to Partisans killed by the Nazi's, with all the graves dating from 1944 to 1946. Designed by Piero Bottoni.

As usual I saw only a fraction of the vast site though I spent most of the day there. Many sections unfortunately are too dangerous to enter with collapsed ceilings and stucco, and the huge monument to the fallen of the First World War with figures by Ercoli Drei was pretty much shut and fenced off on my visit.

However there were encouraging and very visible signs of active restoration work under way all over the site. The busy Facebook page for la Certosa reveals a program of cleaning and rebuilding carried out by both professionals and volunteers as well as public events such as concerts, lectures, evening candle lit tours and firework displays, a cultural diary keeping the space in the eye (and hearts) of the local people in a way sadly missing from the monumental graveyards in Genova, Milano and Torino. Here are this seasons events in English:

Massimiliano Angelelli monument, 1854. This is in fact a "ready made", originally sculpted by Lorenzo Bartolini depicting "Pallas and the Genius of Glory" and bought to mark the tomb.

Maria Beatrice Comi. Died 1924 age 18

Gregorini Bingham, 1875. Desolation, by Vincenzo Vela

Filippo Generali, 1940. By Pasquale Rizzoli

Bonoro monument, 1921. By Alfonso Borghesani

Daghia monument

I've seen a number of these memorials to the thousands of Italian troops who perished as allies fighting Hitler's war against the Soviet Union. They are usually stoically blank, reflecting the morally dubious nature of what they commemorating. This one however is the best I've seen, with a poor bloke freezing and clearly thinking, "what the fuck am I doing here?"

There's a 60 meter high lighthouse in Brescia, an unusual structure given that Brescia is about as far from the sea as it is possible to get in Italy. It towers over the Vantiniano cemetery, which I had a look round earlier last month on as dreich a day as you'd find in Scotland. A short stroll from the railway station in the west of the city, it contains just a couple of interesting sculpture groups.

Far more impressive than its individual pieces is it's general layout, clad in local Brescian marble. It was created in 1813 by Rudolfo Vanini, who is buried under the lighthouse, which was copied by German architect Heinrich Strack as the basis for the Siegessäule in Berlin. It was the first purpose built, monumental cemetery in Italy (Bologna is older, but it was originally a monastery).

However among the marble splendour I also spotted hundreds of these things. Disposable plastic grave markers, basically like upturned bathtubs with a slot to place an inscription slab.

The two most notable Brescian groups were sculpted by the same artist, Giovanni Battista Lombardi, and showcase the transition in funeral decoration from a Neo Classic, Canova dominated style to the new Realist movement which provided Staglieno with so many masterpieces.

The 1856 tomb of the Dossi-Rampinelli-Spalenza family is adorned by a traditional veiled mourner listening in trepidation at the door of the sepulchre. It is a beautiful piece but almost impossible to see at the moment as it is completely surrounded by a jungle of huge potted plants, no doubt gifts from some rather over enthusiastic local admirer. I had to snake my arm through the tangled vegetation to grab this rather awkward snap.

The Maggi- Via family tomb dates from 1859, and features a rather stern paternalist giving alms to a poor, but well dressed woman and her child. Lombardi hasn't quite shaken off his classicism however, the standing man's cloak is toga like, and the kneeling man's bare chest recalls figures of penitent saints.

An hour and 10 minutes away from Milano by train, I went to Brescia to see the Titian Averoldi Polyptich, but would you know it, it was the in the only church in town randomly closed that day (that whole week in fact).